What We Know So Far About the ESL One Katowice 2018 Major

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Published on: 31/12/2017

ESL One Katowice 2018 will be the 13th LAN event of the Dota Pro Circuit and the 4th Major of the season, having a prize pool of 1 million dollars and awarding participating teams with 1500 qualifying points. The event is organized by ESL and is sponsored by Intel.

Location and date

As the name suggests, the tournament will be held in Katowice, Poland, making it the first Dota 2 Major and stadium event to take place in this country. The Playoffs are scheduled for February 24-25, at Spodek Arena, which has a seating capacity of 11.500.

Participants

A total of 16 teams will be participating in the ESL One Katowice 2018 Major. ESL, the tournament’s organizer, decided that 10 of these teams will receive a direct invite while the other 6 will have to go through regional qualifiers.

So far, 4 of the 10 directly invited teams have been announced and they’re the top 4 teams in the Dota Pro Circuit rankings.

Team Secret: with a 2nd place and a 1st place finish at the first 2 Majors of the season, Team Secret are the number one team in the world right now, both in terms of competitive form and qualifying points in the Dota Pro Circuit rankings.

Virtus.pro: champions of ESL One Hamburg 2017 and DOTA Summit 8, Virtus.pro are one of the best teams in the world at the moment, currently sitting at number 2 in the Dota Pro Circuit rankings.

Team Liquid: winners of The International 2017, StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 3, AMD SAPPHIRE Dota PIT League, and Midas Mode Europe. Finalists at DreamLeague Season 8, 3rd-4th place at ESL One Hamburg 2017 and currently sitting at number 2 in the Dota Pro Circuit rankings, having the same number of points like Virtus.pro.

Newbee: finalists at The International 2017, 1st place at Perfect World Masters, 3rd place at AMD SAPPHIRE Dota PIT League, 2nd place at DPL Season 4 Top, and 3rd-4th place at ESL One Hamburg 2017. Currently occupying the 4th position in the Dota Pro Circuit rankings.

Tournament Qualifiers

Each of the 6 Dota 2 regions (Europe, CIS, North America, South America, China and Southeast Asia) will receive one of the remaining 6 spots at ESL One Katowice 2018. The tournament’s regional qualifiers will take place between January 9 and January 12.